I don’t really need an excuse to flip a rock and explore what’s beneath, but the whole event certainly motivated me to get my blog posts going again. I have been busy outside of blogging, so there’s plenty of good stuff coming up, so don’t give up on me.

Yesterday was beautiful here in my area, so I already had plans to go bug hunting. Knowing I’d be looking for a rock to flip, I chose a nearby park where I knew there were lots of good candidates. Here’s the rock I settled on after being distracted by lots of other interesting critters along the way.

A stone lies on the sun-dappled floor of an eastern deciduous forest, begging to be flipped.

I carefully turned over the rock, hoping for something blogworthy. On the ground beneath, a centipede uncoiled, drawing my initial interest. Scanning the scene, I also saw a millipede and a few ants. Then, movement on the underside of the rock itself drew my attention. A harvestman in the family Cosmetidae betrayed its presence.

Hi, Judy. A harvestman is actually not a spider, but a relative. Both spiders and harvestmen are arachnids (class arachnida), but they belong to different orders (araneae and opiliones, respectively). It can be confusing though, since there are both spiders and harvestman commonly referred to as daddy long legs.